Book Deal Announcement!

I'm very excited to announce my first book deal! After 15 years of teaching, I am eager to pursue this dream of writing books for kids! A huge thank you to my agent, Tina Schwartz at The Purcell Agency my writing critique partner, Elspeth, my writing coach, Esther Hershenhorn and the SCBWI Community! A big shout out to my family and friends for cheering me along these past 3 years & a special thank you to Grace and Johnny, who are the biggest fans of my characters!

A note to my future readers:

Dear Reader, 

I hope this book makes you laugh and inspires you to get curious about insects. As a kid, I loved finding inchworms and building little homes for them in my backyard. Insects make up roughly 3 out of 4 of the animal species on Earth. They are important for a lot of reasons. To name a couple, they pollinate the flowers that produce our food and they clean up animal waste and plant decay. Insect biodiversity (variety) and biomass (total quantity) are on the decline. That means we have fewer types of insects and fewer insects in general. They matter. And you matter. The actions you take can help protect insects. Dung and Stag are on a mission to learn more at different insect schools. I encourage you to take on a mission to learn more about what we can do to protect our world’s beautiful insects. 

Yours in wondering, 

Melanie Uteg